There's an informal postmortem for Aliens: Colonial Marines on Kotaku based on conversations with "people with connections to the game" since "despite weeks of fan and press requests for an explanation about what went wrong with this game, representatives from Sega and Gearbox both declined to comment for this story" (as hard as it is to imagine what form such comments would take). The takeaway continues the popular conjecture that the cultures of co-developers Gearbox and TimeGate were not in sync, with differing development and management styles. The story says TimeGate was surprised how little was complete when they took over, and in turn, Gearbox had to throw out and rework a lot of TimGate's efforts when they got it back. They also report disagreements among SEGA and the two developers over the type of game they were making, and say along the way various bits of artwork and gameplay were discarded by each developer in an effort to complete the project. There is also an explanation of why the shipping game looks worse than the E3 demo, saying it was coded for high-end PCs, and was way over "performance budget" for older PCs, much less consoles (though this is something that every game made contends with, and is usually handled with lowered graphics on consoles and quality sliders for PCs). Thanks nin.

Caslon wrote on Feb 27, 2013, 00:34:Anyone besides me see an alarming trend now of games being hyped, with great looking E3 demos of an upcoming titles that don't reflect the end product? It's the new American Greed factor, and sadly, it may work.

That is, if you're a title dev/publisher and it ends up as an inferior end product, then... hyping it up BEFOREHAND with misleading demos and articles and then calculating how many will be reeled in, and going from there may be the new wave of selling games.

Anyone besides me see an alarming trend now of games being hyped, with great looking E3 demos of an upcoming titles that don't reflect the end product? It's the new American Greed factor, and sadly, it may work.

That is, if you're a title dev/publisher and it ends up as an inferior end product, then... hyping it up BEFOREHAND with misleading demos and articles and then calculating how many will be reeled in, and going from there may be the new wave of selling games.

Overon wrote on Feb 25, 2013, 17:36:Lesson here is beware of tech demos.

Another lesson is to up your fucking standards. I've been shouting this game will suck balls SINCE I saw that freaking tech demo. Imagine the amount of acid boiling up into my mouth when I realized later the game was going to be even more horrid! I felt like a freaking xenomorph! Ha ha!

...Also: Don't blindly buy crap because you're fan of the franchise. I'm such a big fan of Geralt of Rivia, my wife actually shows signs of jealousy. Will I blindly buy The Witcher 3? Of course not. It's matter of factly a stupid thing to buy anything unless you know it's what you want. NOT because you've wasted your money -- that's your own damn problem -- but because you've supported a CRAP product and tainted the industry because you did.

Gotta say I agree with you on this one, felt the burn with D3 myself. Although it was hardly the trainwreck of A:CM proportions.

wtf_man wrote on Feb 25, 2013, 20:54:8GB patch sounds about right to me.

the game isn't 8gig on the disc lol

_________________________________________________"Money doesn't exist in the 24th century, the acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity." - Jean-Luc Picard

By who, Fox? They don't give a fuck, never have, never will. This shit wouldn't be canon if they did, and for the matter, neither would Alien 3 and Resurrection. My having been able to take a dump on them without even mentioning the AvP movies just goes to show how much of a damn they give.

I felt bad for Sega until I read the bit about how they wanted it to be like Call of Duty fighting marines. Not anymore. Along with Fox and Gearbox, they can go fuck themselves too.

Overon wrote on Feb 25, 2013, 17:36:Lesson here is beware of tech demos.

Another lesson is to up your fucking standards. I've been shouting this game will suck balls SINCE I saw that freaking tech demo. Imagine the amount of acid boiling up into my mouth when I realized later the game was going to be even more horrid! I felt like a freaking xenomorph! Ha ha!

...Also: Don't blindly buy crap because you're fan of the franchise. I'm such a big fan of Geralt of Rivia, my wife actually shows signs of jealousy. Will I blindly buy The Witcher 3? Of course not. It's matter of factly a stupid thing to buy anything unless you know it's what you want. NOT because you've wasted your money -- that's your own damn problem -- but because you've supported a CRAP product and tainted the industry because you did.

Based on the visuals of the E3 demo there's no way it was too demanding for the average PC, unless the engine itself was very poorly coded. I mean, games like Far Cry 3 and Crysis 3 managed just fine with scalability and they actually looked decent. The reality is the entire development cycle was a clusterfuck and the PR was WAY over the top considering the quality of the game.

Also, the idea that older PCs would have struggled but consoles weren't an issue is simply ludicrous.

By who, Fox? They don't give a fuck, never have, never will. This shit wouldn't be canon if they did, and for the matter, neither would Alien 3 and Resurrection. My having been able to take a dump on them without even mentioning the AvP movies just goes to show how much of a damn they give.

I felt bad for Sega until I read the bit about how they wanted it to be like Call of Duty fighting marines. Not anymore. Along with Fox and Gearbox, they can go fuck themselves too.

Overon wrote on Feb 25, 2013, 17:36:Lesson here is beware of tech demos. They can easily mislead. Based on the article it looks to me that they had cut back graphics because of console ps3 limitations. I wonder if the game would have looked better if they didn't "lower common denominator" the game.

Another lesson I learned a long time ago, don't pre-order shit unless there is a playable demo or better yet just wait until the release and youtube the footage/reviews. devs are getting bold with letting this type of bullshit fly out their doors lately.